


all things will eventually heal (not completely. partially.)

by jemmasimmns (laurellance)



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 07:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11099562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurellance/pseuds/jemmasimmns
Summary: Steve Trevor saves the armistice. The Great War ends. People begin to heal, to adjust.And as the seasons change, so does Diana.





	all things will eventually heal (not completely. partially.)

**Author's Note:**

> There's mentions of period typical sexism in regard to women. It's the 1920s.
> 
> Also Wonder Woman is amazing and I love it and everyone should go see it hint hint wink wink.

The war to end all wars ends. (Or, Diana after.)

* * *

Steve Trevor saves the armistice. Steve Trevor saves the world.

(And when Steve Trevor dies, all he can think about those he has left behind. Sameer. Chief. Charlie. His family.

He has told Diana he loves her, and he does. He tells her he wishes they had more time and it resonates in him, this yearning to be with one of the most beautiful souls he has ever seen. Diana is everything he could have wished for and more, this intelligent and kind woman whose optimism he has envied. She gives him hope, allows him to dream that he could live a normal life free from warfare and he begins to believe in her.

Diana Prince is kind, beautiful, passionate, and hopeful. And he loves her, with all his heart.)

Steve pulls the trigger on the gun, and watches as it hits the cargo in the plane. This is his death. This is his end.

Steve Trevor gives his life to destroy Doctor Poison's arsenal of chemical weapons.

* * *

War does not end when the physical fighting ends, Diana learns in closer detail. There are men who have lost their hearing completely who had their lives taken from them by gunshots for not being able to hear the warnings of the police men. There are drunks in bars, men with faces so disfigured that they wear masks to hide the true extent of the damage. Shell shocked soldiers whose minds are like almost broken clocks.

Men who have had limbs amputated get replacements. Certainly not the best ones, but the best the time gives. She will appreciate the advancements of these technologies a century later, and at times wish desperately for it to have been available a century earlier. It would have helped them more, given them back their livelihoods better.

Electric shock is inhumane. Men who have suffered mental damage from the war need help, not electricity surging through them. Mental Asylums are used for those who have been severely damaged mentally, where some men live in catatonic states of permanent amnesia.

There are scars everywhere she sees, in the children, the mothers, the women, the men. No one is left unharmed. Everyone has known of someone who has had long lasting damage due to the Great War.

She cannot heal their scars or erase them from existence. But she can try to alleviate them, so that they can live with themselves better.

* * *

(Meanwhile in New York just days before the armistice, Moina Michael proposes the idea of red poppies to a group of men who are very supportive of the idea of the Memorial Poppy to help the ex-service men and women of the Great War.

In response to John McCrae's In Flanders Fields, Moina writes back: We Shall Keep the Faith. We will remember and we will honour your service. We will keep your sacrifices alive in our hearts and we will support and continue to honour your memory.

The poppy becomes a symbol for those of the war to end all wars.)

* * *

A century comes and that brings even more horrors. Diana fights for those who cannot do it themselves, wise, weary and eternally kind. The images of genocides haunt her, and they become ghosts, regrets that she should have been able to stop or prevent.

She is old. Ancient. And yet, she does not age. Eternally youthful, bearing the weight of a heavy heart.

(She protects history, one century after her introduction to man kind. Man will one day wither away and die, and they will forget. She cannot and will not. And so she preserves the remnants of past and archives them because it needs to be done.)

* * *

Life goes on. Despite the damage done by the war, people live. They love, they marry and they have children. Who might have once been lonely now has a child. And life, normal life, carries on.

War brings out the worst in people. In times of peace, it can bring out the best in them. (And for that, Diana is happy. This is what Zeus had originally intended, mankind at its best.)

* * *

Still there are tales. Tales of a woman who dressed in close to no clothing, who destroyed German bases effortlessly. There are accounts of power beyond what man and woman can do (like a woman lifting a tank) and those are dismissed as hallucinations caused by the war. Or gas.

The rumour lives on, and one day someone calls the woman (her, Diana muses she hears the story) of wonder. Wonder Woman.

The name catches on. An urban legend, of a woman who must certainly not exist, because women are housewives and mothers and aren't meant to have sway in the public sphere. That kind of story simply must not exist, and the more men denounce it, the more it lives on. Women discuss, some in awe, others in disgust. Amazement. Wonder Woman stays.

* * *

(She never stops missing Steve Trevor, and that is a truth. He has pride and integrity, honour and bravery, and Diana misses him the same way she loves mankind.

Steve teaches her that humanity is flawed, that there is good and bad, that not all men are evil, and above all, he is her first guide to mankind.

Mankind is light and it is dark, and she believes that it will always be worth saving. People are not perfect, and it is what they choose to do with their humanity that determines the kind of character they are.)

* * *

A century later, when all who have lived through Diana's first war are deceased, Bruce Wayne gives to her the photograph taken in the village of Veld. She does not know how he had been able to track it down the original, but she is grateful he has been able to do so.

The war to end all wars has long been over, and she is forever changed by it. She has never forgotten Steve, nor Chief, Charlie or Sameer. Chief, Sameer and Charlie had married, loved, had children. They would die surrounded by their loved ones, from old age accelerated by the damage the war had caused. They would die happy.

But Steve had not. Steve had died in 1918, just days before the armistice. And he lives on in the photograph in her hand, and she knows she will never lose this photograph, not as long as she lives. The clock, and now the photograph. Reminders of a man she has loved, of a heroic man gone far too soon. She had loved him in life, and she loves him in death.

She emails Bruce: _Thank you for bringing him back to me_.

**Author's Note:**

> Moina Michaels was a real person- so was John McCrae! Check them out. It's (hopefully) historically accurate, since I'm basing it off research I did in the past regarding World War One. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at chochang if you want to say hi!


End file.
